The Shell Game
by Tazlet
Summary: The oldest trick in the book teaches a young one.


Odysseus slipped out of the palace by way of the kitchen. He grabbed a sack, one of the onion-filled loaves that were cooling beside the oven, waved at the cooks, who were all too busy go tell on him or call him back, and went trotting down the hill path. Who could expect a man to lie abed on a day when the sky was the color of lapis?

His senses were sharp after weeks of pain. He couldn't have born another hour of his mother and Old Nurse moaning 'oh, the poor scarred lamb' over him, prophesying dire consequences if he even sat up. Oh, there'd be a squall when they found he was gone but, with luck, that would be a while. Old Nurse was nodding in the afternoon heat and he'd arranged two water skins to suggest a sleeping body under the blankets of his bed.

Soft dust puffed between his toes with every step he took. The air smelled of oregano and thyme. With luck he'd find Eirene and they'd…with a shiver he remembered what they'd done out on the point by the old pig herder's hut. He'd been remembering for days. There had been nothing else to do after his wound began to heal and parts of his body, other than the calf of his leg, had become inflamed. No old woman could understand how 'that' was…having to lie there until she fell asleep and started snoring! Lamb, indeed!

His leg was aching painfully by the time he reached Raven's Rock, but it was a good place to stop. From the peak you could see Palliki, Ithaca's larger neighbor, floating on the horizon and the rock loomed over the terraced olive groves banked with quarried stone topped with tangles of wild pear they encircled the crescent shaped harbor. They made the conical sides of Kastelli hill into a Titan's staircase. At the bottom he could see the wharves and royal warehouses and count the six of his father's war ships that were still in port. The beach beyond was cluttered with salt pans, troughs for brining olives, and racks of drying fish. The fishing fleet was back, already The boats tied up to a line of posts set in the sand. Men were handing baskets full of the day's catch over the sides and boys, who'd been out since before dawn helping their fathers, were spreading nets to dry. There'd be no grappling with Eirene today.

His stomach churned with disappointment. But, then, he saw the Cretan freighter at the far end of the beach where a flat outcrop of rock formed a natural pier. Such vessels brought jars of wine from Therra, copper ingots and pottery from Knossos, exotic woods, murex dye and perfumed oils from Egypt—once there'd been a stallion from distant Troy for his father. Now excitement, of a different sort, put wings on his feet. He was Odysseus, prince of Ithaca, and he wasn't going home…at least, not yet.

By the time he got down to the shore, most of the boats had been unloaded. A few women were still sorting baskets of crabs and oysters. Small children were running around, though, poking between their legs, crying for supper. They'd be leaving soon. He headed to where the men were gathered in the shadow of the freighter, sharing wine and talking. There was a circle of them. He couldn't see what they were looking at, but the sea cast things up, usually flotsam or fishing floats, but now and then a shark or a sea monster.

He ran under the prows of the fishing boats with their staring painted eyes: _Triton, Poseidon's Pride, The Argos, _and lastly, _'Dite's Tities_. Asenio owned_ 'the Tit'_ and Arsenio's wife, Rhea was hanging squid on a line to dry.

She called to him, wanting him to take a message to the palace, something about a batch of wool she was dying for his mother. He couldn't waste time with such stuff! But, if he didn't, she might hike up the hill herself and tell his mother, who would tell his father, and...besides, there were olives in one of her baskets. He took a handful and pretended to listen.

He'd known Rhea all of his life and she was old, at least 30, nearly his mother's age. But, suddenly, he was aware of how her green shift clung to her breasts. And the green skirt she'd tied up to stay clear of the water, foaming around her ankles, exposed her strong brown legs. With his knowledge, newly gained from Eirene, he couldn't help imagining how it might feel between her thighs.

His body responded.

Fortunately, before he could betray himself, there was a shout from the freighter. He craned around to look and could see the knot of men below had gotten thicker. Cretan sailors were standing at the rails, looking down. "What is it?"

"A stranger," Rhea said, making a sign.

Odysseus caught his breath. She didn't mean an off-islander. She meant 'not-Greek.'

The annual mission from Mycenae brought mainland Greeks, but strutting men with jewels plaited in their hair. The quick talking Cretan merchants in white linen were Greeks, too, of a sort. But, until today, the only real stranger Odysseus had ever seen had been the broad-shouldered Trojan horse trader, who had looked like anyone else—unless there'd been some hideous oddity under his long blue kilt. Hurriedly, he wiped his hand on his kilt and went to see.

Rhea frowned at the folly of men.

Odysseus had learned that, in the land of the Hyperboreans, people had one leg with a foot so big that they walked on their hands and carried over it their heads to keep the sun off. And that, in the land of south of Punt, people had mouths in their bellies. And that, to the west, men were the color of cinnabar. So it was disappointing that this man, like the Trojan, looked just like anyone else. And, unlike the Trojan, it was easy to be sure.

Except for the pouch around his neck, he was naked. Sunburned, with salt matted dark hair, he was just sitting with his back to a bale of hides, a rag wrapped bundle by his feet and a sea washed board on his lap.

But everyone was staring at the three pink scallop shells he was moving over the board.

His hands danced and skipped and the shells flickered over the board, like magic. He picked one up. A small white stone winked and disappeared to appear, moments later, in another spot. _"Keep eyes on the shell. Which is it under?" _His Greek was barbarous. _"Where it hiding?"_

His hands stopped. Cleax's smallest son reached out and shyly touched one of the shells. The stranger turned it over. There was nothing. He turned over the one beside it and there was the stone. "Must have blinked," the stranger said, replacing the shells and tapping the one covering the stone. "See?" Cleax's son nodded. "Watch. No blink." He made the shells dance. "Now where?"

Head bobbing, the boy pointed. The stranger picked up the shell. "No stone. You blink."

There was laughter and cries to do it again.

"Watch careful, this time." The shells danced. "Where?"

The boy pointed to the shell in the middle. _No, _Odysseus thought to himself,_ the one on the left._ It was under the one on the left.

"Do it again! Do it again!" This time, Odysseus's voice was among the chorus.

Another boy chose. Wrong again. There was murmuring in the crowd. Odysseus found himself saying, "I know where it is."

The stranger squinted at him. "Yes?"

He pointed to the shell on the right. But there was no stone. It was under the one in the middle. He'd been so sure. "Do it again," he said.

The stranger moved the shells. "Ready?"

"I've got it."

"Bet bread on it?"

He'd forgotten the loaf sticking out of his sack.

"Sure." Odysseus leaned forward and tapped the shell on the right. What was a loaf of bread, after all?

The stranger picked up the shell. "My loaf," he said. "Want to show?"

"Yes," Odysseus said. He'd been watching the way the stone moved from shell to shell. Was it magic? Even moving slowly the man's hands danced. But there was a pattern to it, Odysseus realized. His right hand moved left, left, right, left, right, in a figure eight. His left hand moved opposite. That meant the stone had to be under—"The left one."

It was under the left one

The stranger smiled. His hands danced. "Again," he said.

"The one in the middle," Odysseus said.

"Good eyes."

"I see the trick, now," Odysseus said.

One of the fishermen, Platon, said, "Me, too."

"Loaf of bread says you don't."

"I'll have it for supper with that skin of wine over there," Platon said. Everyone laughed.

They laughed again harder when there was no stone under the left hand shell that Platon had chosen. Then Odysseus leaned forward, tapped the middle shell and stone was under it. Platon went to fetch his skin of wine.

"Now I have loaf of bread, skin of wine—oh, and Mycenaean coppers." The stranger fingered the pouch at his neck and held up two fingers. "Anyone else try?"

Everyone else wanted to try and, slowly, amid the laughter, in addition to Odysseus's loaf and Platon's wine the stranger accumulated all kinds of things. There was a flask of olive oil, a jar of balsam scented ointment, a length of rope and a cloak of good brown woo. From the Cretan sailors he took five more Mycenaean coppers and three silver coins and a basket of crabs.

Those times that the stranger didn't win, everyone looked to Odysseus and Odysseus would choose a shell. Every time the white stone would be under the shell Odysseus chose. He watched the stranger's eyes glance over the crowd, as his hands danced over the board and remembered his father saying that with strangers keep one hand on your purse and the other on your balls. The stranger caught his eye and winked. It was as if they shared a secret. The man had eyes like the Aegean the morning after a storm. A god could have eyes like that and sit naked on a rock, playing with men and shells. A fizzing sensation started at the base of his spine and raced down the backs of his thighs, making him shiver harder than thinking of Eirene ever had.

Eventually, the wives came clucking to drag their husbands home to a spoiled dinner and, when everyone was gone, one of the Cretans came down the gangplank. From the enameled copper bands on his arms, he had to be the captain of the freighter. Odysseus had seen him pause by the ship's rail from time to time and shake his head. He was still shaking has he came down the gang plank. "I'd keep you," he said, "but you'd steal my ship out from under me before we got to Corinth."

"Neros, I would have had to." The stranger handed him two of the silver coins, and then one more. "For the trouble we've both been spared."

When he'd gone, Odysseus said, "What did you give him the money for?"

"For saving my life." The stranger opened his pouch and, one by one, put the white stone, the shells and the other coins inside it. Then he let his glance rest on Odysseus. "He plucked me out of the water, yesterday. He was thinking that he'd sell me in the slave market at Corinth, but that would have been an inconvenience. So, I made a bet with him that on the first island we came to I could turn three empty shells into the cost of my passage. He said he'd take half if I did it before dinner and saved him the cost of feeding me again."

"How did you do it?" Odysseus said.

"You saw."

"No. How did you do trick with the shells."

"I thought you figured that out." The stranger winked at him again.

"I thought I did. At first. But then it didn't matter which shell I picked."

"You see more than most, Prince Odysseus. A good attribute in a king."

"How do you know who I am?" Odysseus demanded. It didn't occur to him until later that neither of them remarked on the stranger's perfect Greek.

"Captain Neros told me that the king of Ithaca has a son. That's an old kilt you're wearing but there's still a scrap of purple border on it." The man stood up and brushed sand from his thighs. He began piling his bundle and the things he'd won on top of the basket of crabs. "I'm going to leave you now; I don't care to give him a chance to change his mind."

"I'll tell them you cheated!" He hadn't meant to say it, but it came blurting out.

"No, you won't," the stranger said, and his sudden smile sent the thrill down the back of Odysseus's legs again. "If you did, you'd never know how I did it, and you want to know that more than anything." Did the man read minds, as well? Odysseus wondered, as the stranger bent over and picked up his basket.

"But where will you go?"

"Wherever I can find some wood to make a fire and cook these."

"I know a place with wood and water."

"Show me and I'll teach you the trick. A fair bargain. And, If you're hungry, I'm happy to share. I'm called Methos, by the way."

The old pig farmer's hut had fallen down long ago, but there were stunted nut trees and a spring of clear water. Methos had shown him how to wrap the crabs in seaweed and roast them on hot stones. Only the shells were left by the time The Hunter had begun pursuing The Bear.

For a while they sat listening to the waves off the point and passing the wineskin back and forth. Methos sorted the thing the things he'd won, daubing the balsam ointment on his sunburned shoulders and forehead. Odysseus found himself telling about the accident, how the boar that had seemed to be running away had suddenly swerved and attacked. He had stood his ground. His spear had taken it through the shoulder to the heart. But one of its tusks had ripped his leg open. "I was supposed to go to the court at Mycenae with my father. It would have my first visit. Now, I have to wait another year…

"Chances are the court at Mycenae will still be there next year."

"They made me stay with the women!"

"Horrible," Methos agreed,

"Ithaca is a small island. If I'm to be king and protect her, I'll need to make alliances with the other princes." He pulled his leg up and scowled at the torn flesh. Someday the wound might be an insignificant white line; tonight it was still puckered and red. "This makes me look weak.…"

"No," Methos interrupted. "In the same situation, ninety-nine men in a hundred would have shit themselves and run. You don't know that because you didn't. Trust me, your father will have been boasting about it for days."

Odysseus stared at him. "Truly?"

"Yes. You kept the tusks? Make a war helmet out of them. Wear it as a trophy."

Odysseus folded his arms around his knees and imagined himself in an ivory helmet.

"Believe me; no one will ever doubt your courage."

He realized that Methos had been smiling at him and blushed. "You're a soldier?"

"No. Just been around." Methos had produced a small knife with a curious black blade from his bundle and was slicing up his woolen cloak.

"What are you making?"

"Something to cover up my chapped ass. I'm not inclined to flash it all over the Middle Sea,"

Odysseus watched him unravel a long thread and pull a thin roll of linen from inside the sheath of his knife. There were two bone needles stuck through the fabric. He threaded one of them and began piecing the edges of his cloth together. "You're a sailor!" He'd seen sailors sew and mend.

Methos snorted. "Not if I can help it."

"But a man doesn't turn his hand woman's work," Odysseus objected.

"Why not?"

"All women do is spin, weave and gossip."

"A good thing, too, or we'd all go naked. Where I'm from the winters are long and dark. Anyone, man or woman might weave a belt or stitch on something just to make it beautiful. It passes the time."

Methos worked quickly. The kilt took shape. Odysseus couldn't imagine a Greek man doing that, even if he had no woman or slave to do it for him, yet Methos didn't appear to think he was shamed to be doing it. Odysseus wondered, "What land are you from?"

"A land that lies west of the Thessalian plain, beyond the country of the Isseldonians, all the way at the foot of the Copper Mountains."

There was nothing west of Thessaly on the maps in his father's library.

"Can you get there by ship?"

"Only if your ship sails on grass. It's a vast plain. You Greeks say it's the home of the north wind."

"But, the Cretan pulled you out of the water."

"Because I was on a ship that broke up in a storm."

"How did you survive?"

"Clung to a piece of the hull. I was the best barnacle you ever saw until Neros came along and decided there might be some profit in my pickled hide.

Odysseus counted the days since the last storm on the fingers of both hands. "But, that was more than…"

"Yes, it was. Anyone ever tell you that you ask a lot of questions?" Methos said.

Odysseus watched him rip a fringe where the fabric would cross in front and remembered how he'd been fascinated by the looms in his mother's work room. The cloth had seemed to grow by magic. There had been a mystery there before he'd grown too big to be admitted. "A king," he said, "doesn't turn his hand woman's work."

"Think, boy! If you only learn what men know, you'll only be able to rule, men but if you learn what women know, you'll be able to rule anyone."

"What do women know?"

Methos's smile flashed. "They know how to survive."

It was getting colder. The wind teased Odysseus's nipples. He edged nearer the other man's warmth.

The fire lit the blade of Methos's nose. It gleamed on his shoulders and hands and the shanks of his legs. But the well of his thighs was all shadow and Odysseus couldn't make out the round shapes nestling there in the dark curls. He thought how they'd feel in his hands. His fingers, his lips and the tips of his nipples all began to tingle and his cock was pressing against his loincloth. "You promised," he said, although, his tongue felt thick and slow, "to teach me the trick with the shells."

Methos laughed, "So I did."

He put aside his nearly assembled garment and smoothed the ground in front of him with his hand. From his pouch he shook the shells and white stone. "Find a small stone, like this one. A dried pea will work." He set it on the ground and passed his hand over it. Gone. It reappeared at the next pass. Then it was gone again. Methos turned his hand over and there it was, caught between his palm and thumb. You couldn't see it from the back. "Watch."

Methos selected a shell and set it down. When he picked it up again, it seemed the stone had been underneath it all along. He covered it, included the other two shells, moving them in the quick hopping pattern, and, when he turned them over, each in turn, the stone was under none of them. It rested in his turned up palm.

"Scoop up the stone and put it down with your thumb. Pick up the shells with your fingers. Your hand moves more quickly than the eye can follow and, even when you tell people to watch the shells, no one will see what you're doing."

"That's it?"

Methos reached out and flicked his ear. "That and practice."

The firelight gave Methos two faces. One of them was as bright as the silver coin between his fingers. With a twist of his fingers, the coin was gone.

"Truly?" Odysseus said.

"Yes."

"Like this?" he said.

Then Methos was pushing him down and the world became the heat of the mouth covering his and the hand feeling beneath his kilt. He pressed into it, moaning, as his loincloth was pulled it free. The rough linen dragging across his urgent flesh was too much. Seed poured out of him, leaving his body sprawled helplessly. He lay there as the hot splashes of wetness on his belly turned cold and his belt was undone and his kilt was spread. His legs were rearranged. A weight pressed him into the earth, hardness thrusting between his thighs, pumping; the force drove Odysseus to a new release. Dimly, he heard Methos cry. It was a guttural, pain filled sound. Then stillness…

He tried to move but he was pinned by the weight of the body on top of him and it was a struggle to breathe. Seed was seeping between the cheeks of his ass. It felt...slippery. Tears were running down the side of his face. They weren't his tears.

He pushed. He might have been pushing Raven's Rock and, until that moment, he hadn't been frightened. But what had happened had not been the play of boys or the high prideful excitement of his time with Eirene.

He yelled.

And then he was up, straddling Methos's hips, gasping breath as Methos arched and settled, panting, beneath him. "Yes, like that." Methos was laughing." Just like that." His hands caressed Odysseus's hips, squeezing his ass.

All fear gone. Odysseus laughed, too, and Methos pulled his head down, filling his mouth, his tongue, pumping in and out. He could feel Methos's cock butting him and he scootched backward, rubbing his ass against it. At last, when Methos let him speak, he said, "Teach me what it is women know."

"The flask," Methos panted. "Reach the flask." And Odysseus handed him the little leather flask of oil from the top of the pile.

The smell was earthy and pungent as Methos dripped it onto his hands and slid them over Odysseus' thighs, urging him up, up. Obediently, Odysseus went to his knees. Heat cradled his sac, a greasy finger slipped inside him, in and out, deeper until it touched a place that made him spill his seed again. His cock wilted and he felt himself contracting around the finger but it kept working him. He let out a whimper. It was gone and something bigger and blunter probed for right of entry.

"Sit down." It stretched and filled him. And it hurt but Methos's hands gentled and soothed until it was rooted deep. Then he said, "Squeeze me."

Odysseus squeezed and felt Methos's groan in his gut. He squeezed again. It was better. Much better. Methos stayed still, until his was slick with sweat under Odysseus's thighs, until Odysseus's cock perked up and bobbed, obliging him to move. But slowly, slowly. Methos was in total control. His hands set the measure and brought Odysseus to a high place. This time, when he came, it was like a golden filament was being drawn out through him.

Methos's body was trembling beneath him but the only sound Methos made was the same low guttural cry as before.

There was a gush from his ass as Methos's cock slipped out of him, wiped up with a scrap from the wool as they snuggled together.

"What are you crying for?" There had been tears pooled in Methos's eyes.

"No more questions." Methos gave a jaw cracking yawn. "Sleep. Or tell me what you talk about…you and the woman you meet out here."

Odysseus started. "How—?"

A hand stroked his hair. "You know this place too well."

"We didn't...talk."

He felt Methos's chuckle. "Not even after you've done it two or three times?"

"Five times. Why?"

"It's what lovers do. After they've done it five times. You could hold her in your arms and tell her the kind of king you'd like to be some day."

"She didn't stay. She said the other women would guess where she was." Odysseus burrowed his head into Methos's shoulder. "Besides, she made me swear not to tell."

"She's right. Then, I'll tell you the story...she's what? Twenty-five...married six, seven years..." Odysseus nodded, drowsily; the boats had been decorated with flowers. "...no son to help him when he gets old...no daughter to make her laugh..." Methos's voice slowly unfolded the tale and his hand stroked Odysseus's head. "But she might have told you how it feels to want a child so badly that she took a chance with a long-legged colt with the gold just appearing on his chin..."

He woke when the moon was up, shining so brightly the night sky had turned from black to blue.

Methos was standing by the ashes of the fire, dressed in the kilt he'd made.

Odysseus watched him pull a harness, the contents of that rag wrapped bundle, over his shoulder and buckle it at the waist. A sword, longer than any Odysseus had ever seen, hung across his back.

"That island to the east, what is it called?"

"Palliki."

"If there's a boat gone missing tomorrow, search for it on Palliki."

Odysseus bounced to his feet. "You're leaving!"

"Yes."

"Are you Hermes?"

Methos pulled him into his arms. Under the balsam ointment, he smelled of salt and sex and sweat and wool. "Just a man," he said and kissed him. "Remember me. And don't go looking for the gods; they'll find you."

Then he was gone into the morning.

_He must have been a god,_ Odysseus thought, _sitting naked on a rock, playing with men and shells._

_Finis_

06/11/06


End file.
